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Discovery, Learning And Adoption Of New Techniques: Choosing Specialization To Optimize Technical Progress, James Bessen
Discovery, Learning And Adoption Of New Techniques: Choosing Specialization To Optimize Technical Progress, James Bessen
Faculty Scholarship
Why is it that adopting new technologies takes so long and costs so much? Clearly, firms do not know all the details necessary to implement a complex technology efficiently; learning these details requires extensive search. However, this explanation has a problem: even limited search may be so costly that newly discovered techniques will not be tried. We find that specialization solves this problem. If a complex process is divided into many small components, each searched in parallel, then discoveries are readily tested. Moreover, specialized search can perform surprisingly well even for processes of indefinite complexity. We measure the returns to …
Transgenic Agriculture: Biosafety And International Trade, Michael S. Baram, Calestuous Juma, Sheldon Krimsky, Rufus King
Transgenic Agriculture: Biosafety And International Trade, Michael S. Baram, Calestuous Juma, Sheldon Krimsky, Rufus King
Faculty Scholarship
We stand at the threshold of a new century that will bring novel methods of producing foods, industrial materials, pharmaceuticals, and other products important to society and industry.2 Today's session will, therefore, address a subject of great importance: the introduction of genetically modified crops, livestock, micro-organisms, and other substances into agriculture and related fields, made possible by American and foreign corporate biotechnology.